Monthly Archives: June 2012

By Anna Hutchens Guest contributor: Cheryl Kernot Changing Big Business: The Globalisation of the Fair Trade Movement is a first rate contribution to international discourse on the movement’s continuing evolution. It is authored by Australian, Dr Anna Hutchens, the Director of the Fair Trade Program, Centre for Governance, Knowledge and Development at ANU. As Chair of the Fair Trade Association of Australia and New Zealand I express my shared interest in the topic. In content … Continue reading →

By Dr Fanny Salignac University of Sydney, 2011 Guest contributor: Tracy Wilcox In her timely and important thesis The Institutionalization of Fairtrade: Reconciling Profit-Seeking with Ethical-Seeking Behaviour, researcher Fanny Salignac draws on a comprehensive study of Fairtrade at the coalface to bring us a rich and vivid understanding of how Fairtrade is enacted in practice; from the perspective of key players in the ‘Western’ world (the North) and, perhaps more importantly, the ‘developing’ world (the … Continue reading →

By Jean-Marie Krier In the report Fair Trade 2007: new facts and figures from an ongoing success story. A report on Fair Trade in 33 consumer countries, Jean-Marie Krier provides one of the most comprehensive Fair Trade reviews, collecting data and building on national case studies in 33 countries. It is worth pointing out that the report is prepared by Krier on behalf of the Dutch Association of Worldshops (Netherlands) and its focus is therefore … Continue reading →

By Saumya Roy, Shloka Nath Forbes India’s focus for this July 2010 article is the expansion of the certification scheme in the Indian market. This article is of particular interest as it focuses on one of the core foundations of the Fairtrade certification scheme: the differentiation between producing and consuming countries. In line with Fairtrade’s central aim, farmers are strictly located in developing countries: the producing countries. Typically, Fairtrade labelling initiatives (e.g. Fairtrade Labelling Australia … Continue reading →

By Francisco VanderHoff Boersma; Journal of Business Ethics, Volume 86, Supplement 1 (2009) As I re-read the paper The Urgency and Necessity of a Different type of Market: The Perspective of Producers Organized Within the Fair Trade Market I was reminded how much I liked it the first time. My initial reading of Francisco VanderHoff Boersma’s paper was in the very early days of my PhD research. I was attempting not to drown in a … Continue reading →

By Corinne Gendron, Veronique Bisaillon, Ana Isabel Otero Rance; Journal of Business Ethics , Volume 86 (1) , Springer Journals – Apr 1, 2009 I chose to review the paper: The Institutionalisation of Fair Trade: More than Just a Degraded Form of Social Action for its neutral and informative approach to Fair Trade. Gendron et al’s research looks at Fairtrade’s development by introducing the concept of institutionalisation. It is important to note, however, that such … Continue reading →

By Peter Griffiths; www.griffithspeaker.com and The Journal of Business Ethics (July 2011) I believe to express an opinion one needs to thoroughly understand both sides of the argument, only then can one formulate an informed argument. I chose to review this paper to present the other side of the argument: the one I do not share. My travels to Vietnam and India interviewing Fairtrade farmers, families and cooperatives have convinced me this argument is wrong. … Continue reading →

Fairtrade’s roots can be traced back as far as 50 years ago, anchored in a mixture of charity and solidarity, and what has become known as the Fair Trade movement. Before looking deeper into the topic of Fairtrade, I would like to establish an important distinction the public may not have yet fully grasped: the distinction between Fair Trade (2 words) and Fairtrade (1 word): Fair Trade is a … Continue reading →

Knowledge Connect

The Centre for Social Impact can be reached on +61 2 9385 6568 or email csi@unsw.edu.au
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